Using the 7-Day Daily Average from Deaths 7 Days Ago prevents us from putting too much weight in a single daily number and it accounts for daily fluctuations in deaths reported to the health department and shows a clearer picture of death trends.

COVID-19 has exposed numerous inequities in our system, where low-income residents and people of color have higher risk of death from COVID-19 than whites and areas of low poverty. The Death Rate is the number of deaths from COVID-19 per 100,000 population in each race/ethnicity group. We can see that Latino/Latinx and African Americans are experiencing a disproportionate rate of deaths from COVID-19.

We also characterize deaths by calculating area-based measures of socioeconomic positions to identify areas with varied levels of economic resources so we can track how they are impacted. In LA County, our current death rate in people living in the lowest resource areas is approximately 4 times higher than people living in the highest-resourced areas. This measure, also referred to as “area poverty” reflects the percentage of households living at or below the federal poverty line. Area poverty estimates are derived from the US Census 5-year (2013-2017) American Community Survey at the census tract level.

The 3-Day Average Daily number of hospitalizations was steadily decreasing for some time but has begun to turn and is steadily increasing now, which is of concern.